My Father once called my Mother's Mother, "The poorest Republican" he had ever known. If there was one thing I learned from her, it was how to present.

A show of dignity and prestige.

I can spot the highest quality dress on a rack of shit in the Goodwill to wear to work. I can sort through rusty nails at the flea market and find a shining pendant to wear around my neck. I was trained to spend a dollar and make it look like I spent much more.

"It's all in the presentation," she says, and she is right.

We share a bed for now in her quaint studio apartment near the lake tightly filled with all her grand, old furniture from the past. At least until I can find someplace affordable to live. She washes her face while I sew a black button back on to my Goodwill dress and place it back into one of two plastic boxes that I'm currently living out of.

In the morning my 70 something year old Grandmother will dress and drive an hour and a half to her job caring for two rowdy, four year old twin girls. No retirement, just hard work. I'll go to work as well.

I'm not unhappy, most of the time, however I do wish that not one member of my family - My Mother, My Grandmother, My Sister or My Cousin had a worry in the world.